Daniel LaRusso has not been a good husband to his wife Amanda, also Cobra Kai season 4 wants to handle his previous behavior. Daniel and Amanda’s marriage has faced adversity on the hit Netflix series, with a few fans expecting Cobra Kai season 3 to see the two divisions as a result of his actions. While this proved not to be the situation, season 3 did watch Daniel match with an old girlfriend in Okinawa — something that’s likely to come back and bite him down the street.
Cobra Kai follows the adult lifetime of The Karate Kid bully Johnny Lawrence 34 years following the events of the the’80s film franchise. After the show starts, Johnny is in a rut, having never really moved beyond his high school glory days; today in his 50s, the once-popular wealthy kid bad boy is living a sad, lonely life. The former rivals Johnny and Daniel cross paths again decades following their prior conflict — apparently by accident but possibly by fate — that compels Johnny to clean up his act and reopen Cobra Kai.
Cobra Kai has concentrated on subverting expectations by destabilizing the fantastic guy/bad man binary between Johnny and Daniel. While Daniel was positioned as the protagonist/hero from the Karate Kid movies, the sequel series sets him as the villain character, allowing viewers to empathize with Johnny’s position. Daniel’s persistent attempts to close down Cobra Kai encounter as mean-spirited and unfair, and while he maintains the same good intentions that marked him heroic in the’80s movies, Daniel’s circumstances have changed so much that he’s no longer the underdog audiences root for — Johnny is. By the end of Cobra Kai season 3, Johnn and Daniel have mostly settled their conflict, however, the series has not completely dealt with another significant interpersonal issue set up in previous seasons: Daniel’s marital issues.
Daniel moved to Japan at Cobra Kai season 3 to attempt to salvage a business relationship with Doyona International. After failing to convince the board to keep their prior arrangement, he headed to Okinawa, which is the place of The Karate Kid Part II. Though he doesn’t go together to meet his ex-girlfriend Kumiko, both do have a fateful encounter — which is where Daniel firmly enters “the Danger Zone.” In one telling exchange, Kumiko notes she never got married because no other guy” fought to the death” for her, and Daniel’s blustering reply suggests that emotionally, he is not being entirely faithful to his wife (at least in that instant ). Nothing happens, but there is an unmistakable sexual tension between the two, and it’s never made clear if Daniel tells Amanda about the date.
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At the ending of Cobra Kai season, Daniel also runs into his other ex-girlfriend: Ali Mills. The way Daniel and Johnny squabbled in front of Ali was largely played for laughs, as both Amanda and Ali were disinterested in imagining any kind of rivalry with each other (unlike the men). Yet, it continued a trend that Amanda on some level has to know about. There are lots of cases in Cobra Kai in which Daniel appears to go behind his wife’s back, either because he omits specific information about his activities or just doesn’t follow through on his promises. It’s merely a matter of time before the wise businesswoman figures out what is going on — when she does, Daniel may find himself in a fight he can not Crane kick his way out of.
